Researchers will conduct a randomized evaluation to test the impact of different types of notifications on rates of failure to appear in traffic and criminal misdemeanor courts.

In Mali, researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test how the design and timing of a physical market for inputs (village input fairs) with varying levels of credit access affected farmers’ investment decisions. They found that farmers with access to credit from VIFs organized after harvest increased their demand for inputs while farmers offered VIFs at planting without access to credit did not.

Researchers conducted a randomized evaluation to test whether organizing short learning sessions for villagers about early adopters’ use of a flood-tolerant rice seed variety, Swarna-Sub1, impacted other farmers’ adoption of it. These “farmer field days” were a cost-effective strategy to improve farmers’ learning about Swarna-Sub1 and increased their take-up of Swarna-Sub1 in the next planting season by 40 percent.

Researchers introduced a recruitment drive for a firm in Malawi to evaluate the impact of referral-based hiring on women’s employment at the company. Results from the randomized evaluation indicate that men systematically referred fewer women, and women’s referral of other qualified women was not enough to offset men’s behavior.

The Government of Telangana is partnering with researchers to determine the impact of restoring water tanks for irrigation on water management, agricultural output, and farmers’ income.

Improved crop varieties have the potential to produce higher yields than traditional varieties, but rural farmers often do not have the knowledge to properly grow these crops. Researchers seek to understand how providing different amounts of training on how to cultivate NERICA-3, a high-yield but difficult-to-grow rice variety, affects rice yields, nutrition, and health among rural households in Sierra Leone.

Researchers introduced a soft skills component into a vocational training program in the Dominican Republic to assess the interaction between job and soft skills training on labor market outcomes and expectations. Women experienced increased employment rates and wages in the short term, which dissipated over time; men, on the other hand, experienced negative or no impacts on employment rates and wages in the short term, and no effects in the long term.

Researchers partnered with Thomson-Reuters to evaluate whether receiving information through SMS messages generated economic benefits for farmers in India. Results showed no effect of the intervention on prices, crop losses, or cultivation practices. However, increased access to information seems to have influenced the places where farmers decided to sell their output.